Stanford University classmates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded Hewlett-Packard in 1939. The company’s first product, built in a Palo Alto (Calif.) garage, was an audio oscillator—an electronic test instrument used by sound engineers. Seventy-four years later, their legacy lives on in microchips, cameras, data centers, and, of course, printers.

Photographs by Getty Images; HP Computer Museum; HP